But the problem with fearing what you don’t know is that you don’t know what might happen. Good or bad. That big idea you have could fail, you could embarrass yourself, you could ruin everything, but the odds are just as much in favor of you succeeding, of you looking good, of you taking yourself and your ideas or your business to the next level. You simply don’t know and that scares you (it’s a lie to say anything different).

Even if we’re faced with a familiar situation, one we have been through before, we don’t know how it will play out this time around and that invokes fear.

It’s impossible to know what might happen next; if you were to start an idea without permission or quitting your job to start a business or going back to school or staying-in on a Friday night to start your novel. You don’t know what could happen.

So what should you do when confronted with a reasonable fear, a fear of something that you simply don’t know about? You should dive in, face first. Tackle the issue immediately and see what comes of it.

The good news is that, more often than not, you won’t die.

The results we might be expecting are rarely predictable, and the negative results (if they do occur) are typically a lot less damaging than we might imagine at first.

The excuse for not taking risks, for not pursuing ideas, for not jumping on opportunities, is pathetic at this point in the conversation. If you’re not willing to really pursue your ideas then you are only afraid of something that might happen, but hasn’t. You’re hiding from shadows. Fear is what you see when you face something unknown, so stop worrying about the potential outcome: you don’t know what it will be.

It’s from within the unknown where the greatest discoveries are found.